Author and Filmmaker Curtis Chin Advises 海角视频 Students to Think Creatively about Careers
When LA-based filmmaker and author visited 海角视频 on April 1 to deliver the 2025鈥26 Davidson Lecture, he invited 海角视频 students to engage with him in several ways. He sat in on a global literature class focused on home and identity, where he spoke about his 2023 memoir, Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant, about growing up Asian American in Detroit, coming out in his working-class immigrant community, and earning a degree in creative writing from the University of Michigan as a first-generation college student. Over lunch, Chin chatted with students about how his identities have provided grist for his creative work.聽
To begin his all-school assembly, he treated the campus community to an advance screening of his latest film. Warren King: King of Cardboard will premiere on American Masters on PBS on May 28. Chin鈥檚 documentary short follows an engineer-turned-artist who takes inspiration from the limitations of his medium, corrugated cardboard, to sculpt distinctive, geometrical life-size figures that reflect his Chinese American ancestry. The artwork is lovingly filmed, and Chin鈥檚 portrayal of King is intimate.
The screening provided an ideal entry point for a conversation between Chin and 海角视频 students. One asked him how he had captured such natural exposition from the artist and such a sense of closeness in filming him with his family.
鈥淭he first thing is getting people to trust you, because you know you鈥檙e asking people to open up their lives to you, right?鈥 Chin said. 鈥淚 think they just really have to feel that you have their best interests at heart.鈥 On the other hand, he added, a director has to 鈥渒eep enough distance so that you can ask those questions鈥 that may make a subject uncomfortable鈥攋ust when a friend might pull back out of courtesy, the artist has a responsibility to probe a little deeper.
Chin also spoke about the behind-the-scenes work needed to bring films to completion. Usually, independent filmmakers have to invest significant time and effort raising money for production and securing distribution, he explained. This film had an unusual origin: PBS, having aired an earlier documentary of Chin鈥檚, , about the late photographer Corky Lee, had offered to fund a second short film about another artist of his choice.
After the opportunity fell into his lap, Chin learned about King through a Facebook connection. He said he 鈥渋nstantly fell in love鈥 with King鈥檚 artwork. And as he got to know the story of a fellow Midwesterner who had struggled to balance his responsibility to family with his own artistic ambitions, their similarities proved just as compelling. 鈥淎 lot of the things that he had gone through in life were things that I had also experienced,鈥 Chin said.
A co-founder of the Asian American Writers鈥 Workshop, Chin has written for CNN, Bon Appetit, the Detroit Free Press, and the Boston Globe, as well as for network and cable comedy shows. His social-justice-focused documentary films have been screened in more than 20 countries. To contextualize these highlights, Chin presented his career path with a well-tuned ear for good storytelling.
As a new college graduate, he had moved to New York 鈥渢o become a poet,鈥 he said. Within three years of his first job, passing out Broadway flyers in Times Square, he won the state鈥檚 largest poetry prize.
鈥淭hen I met a boy who was living in Los Angeles, and so I left New York to pursue him in LA,鈥 he said. 鈥淚 stopped writing poetry, because LA is not the place to write poetry, and instead I started writing screenplays, because that鈥檚 what you do in LA, right?鈥 A few years later, he was awarded an ABC Disney Fellowship and began a several-year stretch as a writer for Disney shows.
Then he got a phone call that changed everything. His father had died in a car accident, and his mother was severely injured. Chin was torn between taking over the family business, the Chinese restaurant his great-grandfather had established in 1940, or returning to Hollywood. 鈥淚 decided to split the difference,鈥 he said. 鈥淚 would go back to LA, but I wouldn鈥檛 work for the studios anymore. Instead, I would work on these more personal projects, which fed more into my own personal identity as an Asian American, as a gay person.鈥
Answering questions from students interested in pursuing careers in the arts, he advised them, foremost, to be 鈥渇lexible鈥 about how they earn money. He noted, for example, how different the television-writing industry is now from when he was a kid. Then, only four networks were producing 80 shows a year, with 25 episodes each. Now, near the height of streaming-service production, around 400 shows have been going into production annually, though most with only six to eight episodes. Whereas once a show needed 25 to 30 million viewers to get renewed, now it takes only four to five million.
A downside: Writers鈥 rooms have become smaller, and those jobs don鈥檛 last as long. An upside: It鈥檚 easier to get shows with more diverse perspectives on the air. 鈥淵our chances of getting that first big break are higher,鈥 Chin said. 鈥淵our chances of at least getting your show made into a series are higher, but your chance of getting rich off of that show are lower.鈥
Chin encouraged 海角视频 students to understand and make the most of their personal strengths鈥攁nd not to self-impose limitations. 鈥淚n these creative fields, you hear the word 鈥榥o鈥 all the time,鈥 he said. 鈥淛ust make sure that voice is not coming from yourself.鈥
He recalled contacting 90 agents to represent his memoir鈥攁nd getting 90 rejections. He reviewed the responses that expressed some appreciation for his initial pitch, structured around funny stories about his grandparents and the Chinese mafia, and he analyzed what was currently being published. With a retooled proposal to focus more on his writing on race and coming out, he went back to those agents and soon had four offers for representation. One ultimately helped secure him a good publishing deal.
鈥淚 could have taken any of those 90 noes and just walked away from it, but I didn鈥檛,鈥 Chin said. He advised having 鈥渢hick skin,鈥 saying, 鈥淵ou鈥檝e got to figure out whether it鈥檚 a permanent no or a maybe no, and then you learn from it.鈥
He described a similar approach to directing. Just as he鈥檇 never taken a memoir-writing course, Chin said he had never taken a filmmaking course, but he hadn鈥檛 allowed that to deter him. Instead, he considered himself fortunate to work with strong creative collaborators.
鈥淭he technical stuff, like the angles, the lighting, and all that stuff鈥攜ou can hire someone to do all that,鈥 he said. 鈥淏ut the ability to find the story that you want to tell, and knowing that this is a person that you can connect with, and then actually being on set with them and talking to them鈥攖hat is just people skills.鈥
And those, he said, are important in any career.
